


A Good Night's Work

by nostalgia



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, Darillium, Domesticity, F/M, Post-Episode: 2015 Xmas The Husbands of River Song, Strikes, Tech Support, Writing, call-centres, humour or something?, industrial action
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 04:23:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6314944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgia/pseuds/nostalgia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After settling down on Darillium with River, the Doctor needs to find something to do with all this spare time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Dreamed I Saw John Smith Last Night

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so Imma post this because it has a sort of ending to it and while I would like to continue I'm not sure if I can segue to a more serious tone with it or not. So we'll call it a work-in-progress and let me know if you think it should be left alone or continued with Missy and possibly angst?

It was still dark when the Doctor woke up, but only because the dawn wasn't due for another twenty-four years.

He was warm, naked, and River Song was draped across his body like she owned him. He wasn't going to complain if she was feeling a bit possessive for once. He shifted against the mattress to get more comfortable and River stirred as he moved. She opened her eyes, frowned for a moment as if uncertain where she was, and then she smiled. It was a beautiful smile. 

“Good morning, Sweetie.”

“River.”

“What time is it?”

“Ten thirty,” he said promptly without having to check. “Of course, that's just local time. It's actually -”

River silenced him with a finger to his lips. “Local time is fine.” She moved her hand away and turned to look round the hotel room they'd retreated to after dinner by the Singing Towers. “We'll need to find somewhere more permanent to stay.”

“We should get a house,” he said. He thought about the matter for a moment and then added, “I don't suppose you know where money comes from?”

“I have my own funds,” she said. “Leave the finances to me.” She looked at him for a moment and then she said, “I'll understand if you've changed your mind about staying here. It's a lot to commit to, a quarter of a century staying in one place.” 

“Plenty of people stay in one place,” he said. “Some people live their whole lives without leaving the place where they were born.”

“Not you, though.”

“Not usually,” he admitted. 

“You don't have to.”

“I want to,” he insisted. “Besides, we have a whole planet to explore if we get bored.”

“What about the TARDIS?” asked River.

“She'll be fine. I'll park her in a nice quarry, she loves those.” He sounded quite convincing even to himself.

River nodded and sat up, stretching her arms over her head with a yawn. “Do you have any plans for today?”

“We could stay in bed,” he suggested, trying his most seductive look.

“As tempting as that is, I should start looking for somewhere we can call home. And I want to pay a visit to the university, see if I can get a part-time job.”

“A job?”

“Twenty-four years, Sweetie, that's a good career to most people.” She got out of bed and started picking her clothes up off the floor. “I don't want to get bored either.” 

The Doctor watched her dress. “What will I do while you're off being an archaeologist?”

River shrugged as she fastened her bra at the back. “Anything you want, honey.”

“Maybe I could write a book,” he said, thinking aloud. 

“Science fiction?”

He shook his head. “No, something plausible. Maybe a romantic comedy.” He watched River shimmy back into her clothes. “I'd write it under an assumed name, obviously.”

She picked up his trousers and tossed them towards him. “Obviously.”

He caught them and pondered his career prospects aloud. “I can be romantic. I just need to work on my prose.”

“Or you could do the housework and watch daytime television,” said River, apparently not convinced by his talents in the literary arts.

“Housework?” he scoffed. “Moving things around until they inevitably get dusty again?”

“You could get a job,” suggested River.

“Me? Me get a job?”

“Why not?”

He turned the idea over in his head, examining it from several angles before saying, “I suppose I could. I worked in a shop once, I was quite good at it.”

“Did anything invade the shop?” asked River, tying her hair back in a ponytail.

“Cybermen,” he admitted, “but that could have happened to anyone.”

“Right,” said River, as she finished getting ready, “I'll call you when I've found us a place to live. Do you have any preferences?”

“Stairs,” he said. “They don't _stop_ Daleks, but they do slow them down. An easily-defended room without windows. Possibly battlements.”

“Sweetie,” she said gently, “you do understand that you're probably looking at twenty-four uneventful years with no invasions to foil and no empires to topple, don't you?”

“Not even a small empire?”

“Nope.”

“What about a corrupt local government?” He saw her expression. “Maybe an elected representative who steals stationary from work?”

“If you're not going to be happy -”

“Of course I'll be happy! I'm ecstatic already! I get to spend lots of time with my wonderful wife, that's all I need.”

“Last chance,” she offered.

He waved a hand. “I'll be fine. Go and find us somewhere nice to call home.”

 

“Hello, this is the Doctor speaking, how can I help you?” He paused, listening to the complaint at the other end of the phone. “Oh, that's easy,” he said, “I'll have that fixed in a jiffy. What you need to do is reset the memory. Do you have a spanner and some glue?”

“What are you doing?” hissed the woman at the desk beside his.

“Hold please,” said the Doctor cheerily. He turned to his co-worker. “I'm doing tech support, what are you doing?”

“That's not in the script,” she replied. “You have to follow the script.” She pointed to a blue folder on the Doctor's desk. 

“That thing? No, this is quicker and easier for all concerned.” He moved to resume his call.

The woman took off her headset and leaned towards him. “Didn't you pay attention at the training afternoon?”

“Of course I did.”

“So what are you doing?”

“Helping people?” he ventured.

“You're not supposed to _help_ people!” She looked appalled. “Stick to the script,” she said, returning to her own call with a despairing shake of her head.

The Doctor opened the folder on his desk and read the contents carefully. None of this made sense, but he'd promised himself that he'd do as he was told and not cause trouble, at least for the first few weeks.

He went back to his call. “Hello, yes, look, forget what I just told you.” He read from the script before him. “Is the device attached to a power supply?” He waited, listened, nodded. “And is that power supply turned on?” Another pause. “Have you tried switching the power supply off and on again?”

Half an hour later he hung up from the call and looked at his neighbour. “The memory needed reset. Which is what I said in the first place.”

“But,” said his new friend, “you read the script. That's what you're supposed to do. You're learning,” she added, presumably trying to sound encouraging. “Soon you'll be really good at it.” She held out a hand. “I'm Sheila, I know the script by heart.”

The Doctor shook her hand. “Nice to meet you, probably.” He was getting ever so good at pretending to be polite. He was fairly sure he had learned that from Clara, whoever she was. 

“I'm hoping someday I'll make it to supervisor,” she told him. 

“What do they do?”

“Supervise.”

“Oh,” said the Doctor, aiming to look remotely interested in the conversation. He nodded. “Do you like this job?”

“I hate it,” said Sheila vehemently. She turned back to her own desk to get back to work. “One day, if you're lucky and productive, you'll hate it too.”

 

“How was work, Sweetie?” asked River when he finally got home.

He went to join her in the kitchen. “It was wonderful,” he lied, with what he hoped was a contented smile. “How was your day?”

She took a carton of milk from the fridge. “One of my students wanted an extension on an essay. Death in the family. I checked and he's lost three grandmothers already this term.”

“How unfortunate.”

“I thought so,” she said, pouring milk into her mug of tea. “Are you going to make dinner this evening or shall we get a take-away?”

“We could get a food-machine,” he suggested, “like on the TARDIS.”

River shook her head. “We are not getting a food-machine like on the TARDIS. I know you love her but her chicken curry is the worst thing I've ever tasted and I've lived in student halls of residence.”

He shrugged. “It was just a suggestion.”

River leaned on the counter-top with her mug in one hand. “You miss her.”

“A bit,” he admitted. 

“You didn't have to leave her in that quarry. What about the garden? Why don't you park her next to the geraniums?”

He didn't know how to answer that, so he waited until River worked it out. 

“Ah,” she said, “that'd be too much of a temptation.”

“I'd think to myself 'I'll just nip back to when the shop was open and pick up a loaf,' and the next thing you know I'd have missed five years of your life.” He shook his head. “No, I'm not doing that. I refuse to miss even a minute of our time here.”

“That's very sweet,” said River. She crossed the room and kissed his cheek. “Maybe you really do have a romantic novel inside you.”

The Doctor nodded. “It's a Barbara Cartland book. My mother was furious, it was her favourite.”

 

“Hello, this is the Doctor speaking, how can I help you?” He listened to the problem and then consulted the script. “Have you tried switching it off and on again?” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “Well, perhaps you should try that.”

Sheila gave him a quick thumbs-up from her desk. 

The Doctor was starting to suspect that the call-centre was stuck in some sort of temporal node. Time clearly passed extra-slowly while he was there, but when he left work or even went for lunch the clocks insisted that only a few hours had passed. He might have to do something about that. He saw Sheila heading to the vending machine by the stairs and followed her to ask if she had noticed anything else unusual about the place.

She smiled as he approached. “What are you doing at the weekend?” she asked conversationally.

“The weekend?”

“First weekend after your first pay-day,” she said. “Do you have anything planned?”

“I get paid for doing this?” he asked, surprised. He hadn't thought to ask about that at the interview.

“Of course you do!” She shrugged. “You'll be on the lower rate, of course, but it's not bad pay.”

“There's a lower rate? Is that because I'm new?”

“No, it's... well, I assumed from your accent that you're not from Darillium originally?”

“Not as such.”

“You'd get paid more if you were. It makes you easier to understand, or that's what I was told, anyway.” She didn't seem too fussed about the matter, but the Doctor was filled with the familiar feeling of something being wrong and of being the only person who could fix it. He'd kind of missed that feeling, if he was being honest about it. 

“Someone should complain,” he said, knowing that at last he had found a purpose in this workplace. “What do the union say?”

“Union? What's a union?”

“It's when you all get together and threaten your employer until they give you what you want,” he told her. 

“Hey,” said Sheila, “don't go rocking the boat.”

“What boat? We're not in a boat. We're not even in an inferior boat that's only fit for aliens.”

Sheila stepped back from him. “You're crazy.”

“No,” he said, “I'm the Doctor and I'm going to see that justice is done in this call-centre.” With that , he stalked away back to his workstation, determined to put things right.

 

River peered over his shoulder. “What are you reading?” she asked, taking a seat on the sofa.

“The contract I signed when they gave me that job.” He turned his head to look at her. “Those of us born off-world get paid less than those who were born on Darillium. They say we have funny accents.” He looked at River, daring her to say something about his accent. She didn't, but he didn't think his glare had anything to do with it.

“Well,” she said, casually, “I imagine you'll want to do something about that.”

He put down the contract down on the coffee table. “Is that a problem?”

“No,” she said. “Actually I'm glad you've found something to do that you care about. I was starting to worry.”

“Why would you worry?” he asked. 

“I didn't want you to get bored and start resenting me.”

“Well,” he said, “I thought the same thing about you.”

“No, you didn't.”

“But I could have,” he said. “You're River Song, you're exciting and vibrant and you don't need a man to trap you on one planet for decades.”

She laughed at that. “Sorry,” she said,“you sounded like a self-help book.”

“It's true,” he protested. 

“Stop worrying about me, you'll give yourself grey hairs.”

He put a hand to his hair before he could stop himself. “It makes me look distinguished,” he said defensively. “At least I don't get asked for ID in restaurants any more.”

“That happened _once_!

“It was a traumatic once,” he said. “And as for that chin... And the wispy little eyebrows! I don't know what you saw in me.” 

“Perhaps I have a tweed fetish.”

“That would explain why you were drawn to academia,” said the Doctor.

River smiled. “I've always enjoyed our banter. It's almost as good as the sex.” The Doctor opened his mouth to argue and she cut him off. “I said almost.”

He nodded, satisfied with that. 

“Speaking of which,” said River, “I think we should call it a night. You can plan the revolution in the morning.”

He found himself torn between the promise of carnal ecstasy and his need to make the universe a better place. He thought about flipping a coin and then decided against that in case River took it the wrong way. 

“Okay,” he said, “but I'm getting up early in the morning.”

 

The Doctor stood on a chair to address his assembled co-workers. “Friends... and those of you who aren't friends... we stand here today, together, united in our love of justice and in the hope that we can make Darillium a slightly better place to live. I want you all to know that no matter what dangers we face, no matter how our employers threaten us - even if they have big sticks – that we are doing something important. What do we want?” 

He waited for some time.

A man in the front row raised his hand cautiously. “Equal pay?”

“Yes! And when do we want it?”

“As soon as can be arranged, given the understandable complexities of re-doing the payroll?”

“That'll do!”He climbed down from his chair. “I'll stand at the front in case things get nasty.” There was a bit of mumbling from the crowd and he hastily added, “I'm sure nothing bad will happen to us.” He considered the history of worker solidarity in the face of oppression and said, “Don't worry, I can regenerate if I get killed.”

“You just said nothing bad would happen to us,” Sheila pointed out.

“I'm just preparing you for the possibility of me exploding in a shower of artron energy and emerging with a new face.” They looked at him with understandable confusion. “Hey, I don't judge you for your weird alien quirks.” He picked up a placard. “Right. The time has come to stand together and fight for our rights.”

 

River gasped when he entered the house with blood on his face and a slight limp. “What did they do to you?” she demanded, hurrying over to him.

“We won!”

“What?”

“We won the strike! We're getting equal pay!”

“That's wonderful, but why are you bleeding? Did they get violent? How are the others?”

The Doctor waved away her concern. “Everyone's fine. Better than fine, actually, they're happy and unionised.” 

“But -”

“I fell down the stairs when I was coming back from our successful negotiations. I suppose I was a bit excited.”

“So now everything's okay?” asked River, still concerned. “You'll be happy there?”

“River, I'm the Oncoming Storm, I can't work in a call-centre. I quit, once I was sure we had won.” He looked at her seriously. “Can you think of a good pseudonym for a writer of romantic fiction?”


	2. A Truth Universally Acknowledged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I wrote another bit and I think there is at least one more bit after this one but maybe not. Suspense!

The Doctor looked at the page. The page was blank. The page had been blank all day. In fact it had been blank for several days, despite his best efforts. He sat back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. What was the problem? Surely he was intelligent and thoughtful enough to be able to write a romantic novel? Humans did it all the time, it couldn't be that hard!

He looked around for inspiration. “River,” he said to his wife, “what's the most romantic thing you can think of?”

She didn't look up from marking undergraduate essays. “A cheese sandwich,” she said.

The Doctor blinked. He liked that she had the capacity to surprise him, but this simply didn't make sense. Cheese was not romantic. Cheese was yellow and it smelled funny and it was pleasant enough but romantic it was not. “Not aromatic,” he clarified, in case she had misheard. “I said romantic.”

“I know,” she said, underlining something in red quite enthusiastically. “I think it would be terribly romantic if you made me a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea right now.”

The Doctor looked back at the empty file on the computer. “I don't think that one's very common,” he said. “I want to write about a more universal experience than cheese sandwiches.”

“You asked,” said River, “and I gave you an answer.”

He spun round in his chair a few times and then said, “Okay, what's the _second_ most romantic thing you can think of?”

“Toast.”

“River,” said the Doctor, “I'm trying to write a novel that captures the deep and turbulent emotions of love.”

“My stomach's deep and turbulent,” she said.

He sighed and stood up. “Fine, but don't say I'm not good to you.” He headed to the kitchen. 

“Maybe some biscuits as well,” she called after him.

 

“I have writer's block,” he announced when she finally joined him in bed that night.

“I think you have to be a writer before you can have writer's block,” she said, slipping under the covers. 

“That hurts,” he told her. “I support you in your career, can't you support me in mine?”

River turned onto her side to face him. “Of course I will, Sweetie. How many words have you written so far?”

“None.”

“And how many are you aiming for?”

“I don't know, how many words are there in a novel? Maybe I should I have looked that up before I committed to anything.”

“I can help you with your research,” she offered, smiling her special smile.

“It's not erotica.” He thought for a moment. “Should it be erotica? Does that sell more copies? Does it have fewer words perhaps?”

“Shut up,” said River, pouncing.

She was wriggling out of her nightdress when it came to him. The perfect opening paragraph. He sat up and looked around for a pen and paper. 

“What are you doing?” asked River breathlessly. 

“I've had an idea.” He failed to find anything to make notes with, so he got up to go to the computer.

“So why are you getting out of bed?”

“It's not that sort of idea,” he said, dressing quickly. “It's an idea for my novel.”

River looked annoyed. “Aren't you going to finish what you started?” 

“Soon, but first I need to write this down before I forget it.”

River threw a pillow at him.

 

“Did you get any sleep at all?” asked River, coming into the front room.

“I'll go to bed in a minute,” he said without looking up, “I'm at a good bit.”

“It's 7am,” she told him.

“What? It can't be, it's still dark outside.”

“Honey, there's still twenty-four years of night left, of course it's dark.”

“Oh,” he said. He'd forgotten that detail in his rush of creativity. “Never mind, I've got about twenty thousand words done.”

“Already?” She seemed surprised. 

“Is that not usual?” he asked, having no idea how fast he was supposed to write once he had actually started.

River crossed the room to read over his shoulder. “Let me see.” She read a few lines under her breath. “I don't think humans can bend that way.”

“Who said they were human?”

“Aren't they?”

“They are,” he admitted, “but they're extra-supple because of their diet.”

“You just made that up, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

River put a hand on his shoulder. “Maybe you can fix that at the editing stage.” She read a bit more. Then she giggled. 

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said, covering her mouth with her hand as if that would somehow hide her amusement.

He looked at her. “Is it bad?”

“I wouldn't say it's _bad_ , it's just... not particularly good.”

“River!” He felt wounded, and understandably so.

“I'm sorry, my love, did you want me to lie?”

“No, I want you to tell the truth but... what don't you like about it?”

“It's fine, really, apart from the dialogue and the descriptions.”

The Doctor's ego was tough, but it wasn't invulnerable to attack. “That's the entire thing!” he protested, hurt in new and painful ways.

River glanced at her watch. “I have to go to work. I can go over it with you when I get back, if you like?”

He shook his head. “No, I'll make it better,” he said, with no idea how he was going to improve on his own obvious genius. 

“Just write about things that _you_ think are romantic, don't bother trying to guess what other people like. Write what you know.”

“Okay,” he said, doubtfully. 

 

River finished reading and turned in her chair to stare at her husband. 

He leaned forwards on the sofa. “What did you think?”

“It's... better than it was.” 

“And that's good, right?”

“Yes,” she said, with obviously forced positivity. “There are a few things you might want to change, but this is much better than your first attempt.”

“Why do I feel like a student who's about to be told that it was a good effort but they still failed?”

River paused before replying. “What was it that first attracted you to me?”

He could see where this was going. “Is it the bit where the love interest tries to murder the protagonist?”

“That's not what most people think of as a good start to a relationship,” she said carefully.

“But you said to write what I know!”

“Within reason!” 

“It was that or write about repairing the TARDIS,” he protested. “Most people don't have a TARDIS so I thought they wouldn't understand how poetic that can be.”

“I'm sorry, Doctor, I think you're just going to have to admit that you're not romantic novelist material.”

“I can do anything I like!” he insisted. 

“Okay, what about a historical romance? You've been to history, I'm sure you could come up with something. Maybe it could have handsome knights and bodice-ripping?”

“Have you ever tried ripping a bodice?” he asked. “I did once, but it was an emergency and I didn't take notes. The poor woman was terribly embarrassed but at least she didn't die,” he added. 

She shrugged. “I don't know what else to suggest, aside from plagiarism.”

“I don't need to steal words, I already know all of them. And I can combine them in endless ways. I've probably said more original sentences than most people. Like 'Romana, these monsters turn into drugs when you electrocute them.' I bet you've never heard that one before. I actually said that once.” He considered. “Or words to that effect, but either way it's a highly original sentence.”

“Well, perhaps a different genre?” she suggested. 

“It was this or an autobiography, and this involves coming up with fewer lies. I can do this,” he said, determined. “I just need to practice a bit.”

 

“I've written the great Gallifreyan novel!” 

River muttered and pulled the covers up over her head. 

“It took some doing, but I _know_ this one is good.”

“That's nice, dear,” she mumbled, eyes closed.

“I'm going to send it to a publisher when I can find a big enough envelope.”

She sighed and opened her eyes. “I'll read it in the morning.”

“That's twenty-four years away,” he reminded her. 

“You know what I meant! Let me sleep or I'll... I'll do something.” She yawned. “Too tired for threats.”

“Okay, you can read it when you get up.” He left the bedroom and returned to the sitting-room, still slightly high from finishing writing the greatest book of all time.

He'd need a pen name, obviously. He'd given the matter some thought and had decided on 'Josephine Grant,' on the basis that Jo was centuries and light-years away, and in any case she didn't use it after she got married so clearly she hadn't been that attached to it in the first place.

Yes, it was a good name. Someone from UNIT might be able to make the connection, but who was to say that Jo _wouldn't_ write eighty thousand words of mildly erotic alien romance? She could be into that sort of thing, it wasn't completely implausible.

Jack would definitely be into that sort of thing, but he had never shown much interest in reading and Jo was cuter anyway. So Josephine Grant it was.

 

“I can't believe you actually got published,” said River, re-reading the letter which had arrived that morning from the publisher. 

The Doctor shrugged modestly. “They want me to write a sequel.”

“Are you going to?”

“No way, I sweated blood getting that one finished, I'm not doing it again. I've decided to dedicate it to you,” he added, “since you helped so much when I was struggling with all those sentences.” 

“Now _that's_ quite romantic,” said River with a smile.

“I thought so.”

“Are you sure that this is the end of your writing career?” she asked. 

“Yes, from now on I'll focus all my romance on you.”

River smiled. “Thank you, Sweetie.”

“I wonder if I'll get letters from adoring fans,” he mused. “I hope they don't start sending me underwear.”

She laughed. “Come to bed, Josephine.”

And he did.


End file.
